putting the T in LGBT

July 7, 2009

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/07/01/why-i-hate-filling-out-forms/
People wonder why I get so snippy about gender roles, and why I won’t play girls vs. guys games, and all that. Because it’s not so simple. Why does gender even have to be listed in half the places it’s listed? Just to make those of us who are outside the norm feel weird? It’s so phenomenally unnecessary and people don’t even understand how it’s troubling.

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I’m taking a “Cultural Competency in Health Care” course right now, and LGBTI day is tomorrow (well, LGBTI and Jewish culture), so I’ve actually been doing a lot of medical-guideline-reading and clinical practice suggestions.
For health care forms, there’s a suggestion to either leave gender as a fill-in-the-blank, or to use the following:
Check Any of the Following (may check more than one box):
*Male
*Female
*Transgender
-Male to Female
-Female to Male
*Other
The whole problem in medicine is that it’s part of getting a complete patient history, and can be needed for treatment, but, as our reading points out, “you may need to arrange individual counseling for office staff as they may have deeply held prejudices against members of the LGBTI community.” (It also quoted data from a 1998 survey of nursing students that was really horrendous; about 10% of those polled gave strongly bigoted answers.)
It goes more deeply into a more general problem with medicine: in order to get the best care, you have to be able to trust the person who’s caring for you, and they’ve got to be trustworthy – and one bad experience, or a lot of bad experiences, makes it harder to trust the next provider.

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
— Charles Bukowski